| Any company that merges or incorporates another into its
fold ends up dealing with several e-mail marketing challenges.
E-mail lists might overlap, or design standards might be
completely different - not to mention that the companies would
likely be using disparate e-mail service providers, making it
difficult to coordinate a unified program. Sixteen months ago, ThermoFisher Scientific (the company formed when Thermo Electron
Corp. and Fisher Scientific International merged in November
2006) was facing all of the above, said Jeff Mucci, the
company’s e-marketing and analytics manager, enterprise
e-business, who started right after the merger.
“We had a ton of different lists and different list sources,”
Mucci said. “And that’s not to say all the lists and names we
had were great,” he added. “Everything was fragmented when we
merged. There was no singularity, and each separate company
segment managed their own lists using their own e-mail service
provider vendor.”
This meant that many outgoing messages didn’t align with
ThermoFisher Scientific’s overall brand. Recipients were
unsubscribing because they were overwhelmed with e-mail from the
multiple divisions within the combined company, Mucci said.
Plus, with a fragmented list, there was no way to make sure
someone who unsubscribed from one list would be removed from all
the company’s lists.
“There are still companies to this day that are choosing not
to receive e-mails from us,” he said. “Some of our best and
biggest clients opted out because the volume of e-mails was just
too high.”
In an effort to counteract all those problems, ThermoFisher
Scientific asked all its divisions to use the same e-mail
service provider, SubscriberMail. The company now has a single
subscriber list for its 49 subaccounts. “Each business unit has
its own accounts, but if someone unsubscribes from one list,
then the change is carried over to all of the lists,” Mucci
said.
As part of this strategy, the company put limits on the
number of times any customer or prospect can be contacted in a
single month. It also created several “seed” accounts on the
main subscriber list to ensure that someone from the marketing
department monitors every message that goes out for brand and
design quality.
“We’ve established corporate brand templates, although people
can build their own templates as long as they follow overall
design suggestions - color use, logo placement, copyright, using
‘Inc.,’ for example,” Mucci said. “Anyone who abuses the
privilege has to use the templates, so this forces people to
adhere to the rules.”
The benefits of each step have been significant, he said.
Delivery rates have increased “dramatically,” unsubscribe rates
are down and there haven’t been any spam complaints in more than
90 days. Mucci is so confident in his new program that he’s
having marketing leadership go back to top customers to tell
them that changes have been put into place so they can possibly
resubscribe, he said.
“We’re finally able to see who [in marketing] is doing
something right and where success lies,” he said. “We can share
best practices, and we’re finally seeing brand consistency.” |
